Ahhh you don't need one of those detector things. Keep your chimeny and burner clean and no worries. Just a bit of maintenance every winter before your first lighting is all thats needed. Kind of like changing those 9v batts, but less frequent. Those things are made in CHINA and they probably can't even read your complaint letter. And so what we have here is a crummy design built in a foreign land that's known to output some really sorry stuff and it's susposed to save lives in an event something happens. But it's a law to have one and they all come from the same country and hopefully not the same factory.

Nancy, As far as I can tell they are an American company, but may have Contract Manufactured in Asia. I think this was just a case of poor design validation. The mechanical engineer who worked on the latching feature should have known better, so I have to believe he was inexperienced.

TJ, Yes, I contacted the manufacturer and told them they had a major defect in their device. I even wrote to them to email me for specific information regarding the defect, but that was almost three months ago, and the still haven't contacted me.

Hi Ann. I don't know if Home Depot did anything with this product. I do know I contacted the company that made it and told them of the defect, giving them my email address so that they could receive detailed information regarding it, but I never got a reply. Worst of all, this is an American company.

They should be. Yet they do not do the level of quality control they would do in their own factory. The latest public example is here in Chicago. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) bought $1.1B of new trains. The manufacturer was Bombardier. They in turn got some structural steel members from an overseas manufacturer. These were all defective. The CTA will not use the trains until all of the sub-standard members are fixed. The situation I mentioned as my first experience was transistors in a power supply for lighting. The overseas manufacturer substituted what they assumed were equivalent parts when they could not get the specified parts. These failed in less than six months in a product that should last many years. There are many others, but in most cases I am under non-disclosure agreements. I have also seen this in software.

The problem is not that the overseas manufacturers or deveopers cannot do the job. What I am seeing happening is that the customers assume that the supplier does all the same quality control that they do and have all the same standards. When you are outsourcing just for price, that is what happens. You are still responsible for quality control. You are the one with the name on the box. Assuming tha that quality is a cost, not an advantage, is the problem. I am talking about quality in design and manufacture. I thought we learned that with the auto industry. Come to think of it, it was an overseas company that took those lessons from the US and applied them when US companies stopped.

They also mandate that they can take our tax dollars to buy atomic bombs and gun down innocent civilians in foreign lands. They also mandate that an electrician needs a license and not every bozo can monkey around with stuff that can kill you. Same applies to car mechanics that work on the breaks and steering of your car. Same applies to you who is mandated to buy car insurance.

Governments do dumb stuff, but sometimes they put something really decent in place, such as mandatory health insurance. Otherwise you end up in the hospital without insurance and have the choice to either file for bancruptcy or die, because you either opt for the care or reject it.

The health insurance mandate is no different than taking your income tax and use it for road maintenance. It is a thing that works better when everyone in the community pitches in. Otherwise you would have a toll booth at the end of your driveway.

Aside from that, the majority of the federal health care legislation isn't even in effect yet, but that doesn't stop some from mindlessly bashing it as 'not working'.

As for CO detectors, a 20$ gadget can save lives. Not having a CO detector in your home is just stupid. I agree, it is shocking that a law is needed to make people take such simple and basic precaution to protect themselves, it should be obvious. But common sense went out the door for many.

Naperlou, I didn't realize that changes in the product was yet another of the hazzards of outsourcing. Are brand owners unaware of this? I would think they would examine their products carefully as they roll off an outsourced manufactruing line.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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